OCCUPY LOVE THIS VALENTINE'S DAY

Valentine’s Day typically brings to mind chocolates, red roses, and candy grams. These symbols of affection are often exchanged between lovers, family members, and friends. But there is a larger love story to celebrate too.

In OCCUPY LOVE, director Velcrow Ripper poses the question: “How could the crisis we are facing become a love story?” Social movements around the world are challenging the dominant system of power, which is failing to provide us with health, happiness, and meaning. The old paradigm focused on the greed of the few is leading to economic and ecological collapse. A new paradigm is emerging that envisions alternative systems of economics, sustainability, and empathy.

‘Occupy Love’ means occupying your mind, your city, your country, and the planet with a love that includes the needs of others, instead of just our own selfish wants. Love is what connects the dots between the Egyptian Revolution, the Indignado uprising in Spain, Occupy Wall Street in New York, Indigenous activists at the Alberta Tar Sands, and beyond.

So, this Valentine’s Day, let’s think not only about private love, but also about public love.

As stated by Charles Eisenstein, an author and speaker portrayed in the film: “An economist says that essentially more for you is less for me, but the lover knows that more for you is more for me, too. If you love somebody, then their happiness is your happiness. Their pain is your pain. Your sense of self expands to include other beings. That’s love. Love is the expansion of the self to include the other, and that’s a different kind of revolution.”

Cinema Politica is the largest campus and community based documentary screening network in the world. We are a Montreal-based non-profit media arts organization dedicated to the dissemination of independent political works by Canadian and international filmmakers.